Ferrari 458 Speciale 1/24

[Kjenjak]

Hi guys,
as my last rebuild of a R/C toy car (Ferrari FF), which isn't available otherwise in 1/24, turned out quite well, I thought I'd give it another shot. This time with a Ferrari 458 Speciale. Jamara startet their Speciale Aperta some time ago, and this is what I will be using. Unlike the FF, I will not use the whole body and build an Aperta with closed top, but the regular coupe. So I will need also the body of the regular kit.
Revell has better interiour details, Fujimi provides the nicer body with better proportions IMO. I used the Revell body for my Spider, so this time it will be the Fujimi kit, as this will be more about the outside appearance. Overall, curbside will be fine.

Let's go!

The Fujimi body and the Jamara car.


Naturally, the Jamara's inside isn't helpful. I will use these parts for the rebuild: front and rear of the main body, front and rear of the chassis, as they already fit the body of course, the little blades on the sides, and the rims. Other Speciale specific parts will have to be scratch built.


Off came the new body parts.


The same cut on the Fujimi body. Luckily the rear is already a separate part in the Fujimi kit, so no extra cutting here.


A quick test fit. Looks good.



The yellow paint has to come off. The plastic of the Jamara car is very brittle, I already broke off some small parts. There will be no extensive scratch building on these new body parts, the risk of breaking them completely is too high.


All air intakes and outlets are opened, damages repaired, and the parts are sprayed with fine grey primer to check for last flaws.
The rear end gave me some headaches. There's supposed to be a big mesh, covering the entire width of the car, including the round areas arround the taillights, same as on the regular 458. It was difficult enough to bend those single P/E pieces to the correct threedimensional shape, but cutting one single piece of mesh, that will have the correct form on both sides after bending seems impossible. So I cut out only the straight middle part and will replace it by P/E mesh. The sides under the taillights will just be painted black. The red taillights will cover most of it, hopefully.
Let's see how that will turn out later.


The new parts are glued to the Fujimi body.



First I used C/A superglue to keep the parts in place, then I backed up the joints on the inside with 2K epoxy and pieces of plastic sheet.


The little incorrections at the wheel arches are corrected, and the whole body is covered in fine grey primer, ready for painting.



I have always been a fan of Ferrari's Blu Elettrico. Zeropaints version of that color doesn't reproduce the effect in the right way, so like others before me, I have used their Candy Electric Blue, on a Very Fine Silver base, here already covered with some clear.
The color is gorgeous, even though the pictures don't really show it yet.
Btw, I plan to use lot's of dark, black and C/F accents next to the blue color.


The first accent will be Speciale stripes. Not the wide center stripe, but the two smaller ones.
As the clear is still very rough, I sanded and (coarse) polished the center areas, where the stripes will be, to have a good even base.


For the stripes, first I painted some left over white decal printing paper with TS30 silver.


Then I masked the left and right side, leaving a stripe of about 4mm, which was painted semigloss black.


I cut it into pieces of the right length, and cut away the silver sides, leaving only about 0,5 mm of the silver color on both sides.


Now I applied these stripes like regular decals, with the help of some Micro Sol. It worked quite well, the paint-decals even bent arround the edges.


All 6 stripes are on.
The complete body is covered in more TS13 gloss clear. Now it needs to rest until the paint is really hard and dry, for sanding and polishing.


On to chassis and interior...

[gtziaf]

You are my hero!!!
Love it!!!

[karambolis8]

I have 458 Fujimi conversion to Speciale in my plans too

[till.a.fischer]

...love this.

Gesendet von meinem D6603 mit Tapatalk

[PyroSafe]

Wow amazing work! I follow this thread

[Kjenjak]

Thanks guys!


This is what I had in mind, only in blue, to match the body color.




Fujimis main cockpit part.


Seats, doors, floor and center console are different in the Speciale, so they had to go.


First I put in some sheet to close the holes from the center console, and also a new floor.
Luckily the center console of the Speciale is very cubic without extra angles, so it's rather easy to rebuild it. I decided to make all 3 compartments in the console equaly deep, even though on the real car, they are a bit different.



The inner door panels were built out of 2 layers of plastic sheet, to recreate the 3 dimensional form. Since Fujimis proportions and forms are not really accurate in this part of the car/cockpit, the proportions of the doors are not so exact as well, but it will have to do.


I cut in a kind of panelline to separate the Alcantara top from the C/F underneath, and painted everything black, then microballs + flat black for the upper parts and C/F for the lower parts.



As the proportions on the Fujimi car are not correct, I can only determine the correct position of the compartments in relation to the seats, so first I have to figure out where exactly the seats will sit.

So we need some seats!

[Kjenjak]

I started the seats by filling the lower parts with white resin to give them a good base to stand on, and also used putty to repair the damages on the side, that happend while cutting them out of the floor.


I cut off the lower front part to create the right form. The fishbone pattern on the seat parts are filled with putty.




I glued a single sheet of paper towel tissue onto the plastic, to create a surface that looks like cloth.
These cushions are now painted blue. The black stripes are pieces of decal cut to size. In the end the cushions are covered with semigloss clear, and masked.




Now the seats are painted flat black, the sides and the rear are now also masked, and the remaining surfaces are painted again with flat black and micro balls for the Alcantara look.



The side and rear parts are now covered in C/F.

[Kjenjak]

Now I can continue on the center console, and put on the final pieces and shaped the form. Gaps are filled with putty and sanded smooth.







The cockpit is painted semigloss black. The rear got some microballs + flat black to continue the Alcantara surfaces.
In the middle there will be one of these handles with 3 buttons, the same as in the LaFerrari. As I don't have any casting equipment, and I don't want to buy an extra kit for 50 €, I will try to make it myself, from sheet and a round rod.
The sheet is cut into the right shape, and bent in one place. Then I made some cuts, and glued in pieces of the rod. The rods were cut of vertically, the gaps filled, and the whole thing glued to a base piece. Everything is covered by C/F, and some red/white + black/white decals and red/black paint added.






For the floor I used some P/E checker plate. I also added P/E rubber floor matt, foot rest and pedals. In the rear I added a big piece of coarse P/E mesh.


Finally I added a blue P/E horse emblem to the seats, and some seatbelts using several different things from the scrap box, and glued the seats into the cockpit.

[Kjenjak]

The dashboard didn't need so much improvement. On the passenger side there's an additional cushion to protect the knees. So I cut out the cover of the glove compartment, built a new one out of sheet, and put on a big pile of white resin. Same on the side right of the compartment. The resin was filed to the correct form.




I cut out all air vents to add P/E parts.


The dashboard is painted semi-gloss black, with micro-balls + flat black on top and on the knee cushions, C/F on the air vents and instruments, some self made decals for the instruments, and P/E parts on the air vents.


Steering wheel is detail painted as well.
Putting everything together was quite a challenge, I had to cut off material again from dashboard and doors to make them fit.

In a lot of pictures of the Speciale interior the is a fire extinguisher in the passenger footroom. So I will try to make one of these as well.
As a base part, I chose an ECM pod from an old 1/48 F-4 Phantom kit.


I cut away the details, and used an electric drill and a file to shape the right form. I glued a small piece of wire into the tip.



Now the part is painted bright red.
The "handle thing" is made from a small piece of sheet, a small piece of decal cardboard, and a small piece of wire, all glued together and painted red and silver. The casing is made from a piece of paper, painted flat black + microballs. The straps are P/E parts from my scrap box. I think it turned out well, considering the parts it's made from.



Finally the cockpit is complete. I hope it will fit into the body without problems.

[Kjenjak]

There's not so much to show concerning the chassis. The suspention is built OOB, and the engine block is kept quite simple, as it can't really be seen in the end. The front and rear sections will be cut off later, and be replaced by Jamara parts, that match the new body parts.


I haven't checked the technical details, but the Speciale brakes look extactly like those on the LaFerrari, so I used some P/E brake discs which are bigger than 458 stock discs, and calipers I had left from a previous LaFerrari build.



The finished cockpit is in place, so the upper engine parts can be added.


At this stage I made a test fit of the chassis into the body, and quite some plastic had to be removed to make everything fit properly.



There's no need to scratch build anything else in the engine room, the changes to the Speciale are all about optical appearance. At least what's visible from the outside.
All black and red surfaces are covered in C/F decals, and a white water tank, some P/E for the rear hatch latch, red center stripes, small red stripes arround the metal transfer emblems, plus some additional emblems and wires were added.

[Kjenjak]

For the new rims, these are the parts to start with, Fujimis kit parts, and Jamaras all-in-one plastic wheels.
I will use the outside of the Fujimi part, together with its kit tire, so the proportions will be kept.


The Fujimi parts were striped of their chrome. Then I cut out the inner 5 spoke star, keeping only the outer ring and the inner housing for the soft plastic part that connects the wheel to the suspension.
The Jamara wheels lost 90% of their plastic, keeping only the new 5 spoke star. The spokes were thinned until the hole in the center of each spoke could be cut open. The rear end is filed flat.



Now the new star is glued into the original rim ring, and the small housing is glued in the back, so the new wheel can be attached like the original Fujimi part.



I made some paper gauges in advance, so see how deep the small ring is sitting in the rim, and to know how much plastic to cut away, so it will sit in the new rim exactly in the same way.


The new part has been cleaned, some imperfections corrected, and primed.
I will add some T2M metal lug nuts, so I also drilled some additional holes for them.
The rims were painted with a silver base coat and Alclad Magnesium.



Painted rims, lug nuts, center emblems, air valves and kit tires are assembled, and the wheels are ready to go onto the car!

[Kjenjak]

The painted body has had time to settle, now it's sanded (1200 and 3000) and polished (coarse, fine, finish). Looks already good, I think!
The clear has however attacked the silver stripes in some places, so I will have to do some corrections later.

[da_ashman]

That colour.... WOW!

[Twowheelsrule]

Impressive work with the car! I was surprised how well the wheels came out, they look very good!

[Some_Kid]

Well done man. Is that tamiya mica blue?